Dorothy Day (1994)A Lived & Challenging Faith in God

A response paper from my undergraduate course work, posted here with a few edits – but with all of the original’s awkward passion. This essay illustrates some of the thinking that led me to the MADWOMAN.

Raised in the Evangelical Protestant tradition there is so much of the Church, as I’ve experienced it, that serves only to suffocate my spirit. I’ve developed a pattern of walking out of services amidst sidelong glances and sniffs of disapproval. I seek a church where God is not hidden by the doctrine, by the preaching, and the ministries. I seek a church where the contributions of the people are valued as those from creations of God Most High. I recognize that I cannot defer my spiritual responsibility to the churches, nor to my past experiences. I am in my own process of questing in soul, not for an institution of the created to nurture and support me, but a relationship with the Creator.

Such a quest necessitates inquiries that resemble heresy in the perspective of my tradition and my heritage. It troubles me that so much of the Church is contrary to vital questing that builds life in wholeness. I have found, in rarity, guides and instigators who keep me in my course. Dorothy Day impressed me as one of these, to join the likes of Simone Weil. More than inspirers, they demand that conformity to religion be put off in order to truly know and glorify God.

I first noticed Day’s striking commitment to Christ early in Coles’ biography when he quotes her as saying, “I just sat there and thought of our Lord, and his visit to us all those centuries ago, and I said to myself that my great luck was to have had him on my mind for so long in my life.” (Coles; 16) I was justifiably awed. Who was this woman – to have such real faith that it evoked emotions of love and gratitude? Her faith drew me in to trust her out of recognition of her commitment to Christ, yet I was simultaneously hesitant. Was she just another batty old grandma fanatic spouting off righteous thanks from a pose of devotion? Continuing to listen to her provided more understanding of her faith. It was a faith born of process, a faith that was a process. Day outlined few answers other than an excellent response to my nervous inquiry. She granted permission to quest.

“But for me faith is not diminished by this kind of talk. God put us here to go through this kind of mental gymnastics…. He put us here to ask, to try to find out the best way possible to live with our neighbors. Of course, you can go through life not asking, and that’s the tragedy: so many lives lived in moral blindness.” (Coles; 24) In questing there is vital questioning. Vital because the traditions and theology have put God in a box. God is now small enough to cooperate with doctrine – and small enough to permit marginalization. We maintain a God who allows us to be ignorant of how to live with our neighbors. That cannot be permitted. It must be defied. A small God is incompatible with the example and words of Christ. So there is a quest for the God who is big enough – big enough to embrace, penetrate, and bless the margins. The God who is big enough to take on human flesh, human ridicule, and human pain and grace humanity with hope. Hope realized in Christ.

Confronting the small God of hierarchical tradition is a symptom of the greater need that led to the diminution of God in the first place. The quest is not merely to replace the image of a small God. The quest that grips the soul is to more than meet the great God; more than uncover some hint of this broader divinity. The quest is to be in relationship with this God. Working one’s way out of the tangle of tradition into the expanse of radical, spiritual unknown. There is optimism. Simon Weil, in a letter that is now called her “Spiritual Autobiography,” shared the following “one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.” (Fiedler; 69)

Where does this search for truth come from? For many it originates in reaction to the doctrines of their traditions, but it does not remain in that form. It continues out of a hunger specific to itself alone. It is a hunger for truth for truth’s own sake. In the many seekers there are many perspectives, and so I wonder if there is one answer. Here I am caught and puzzled. Isn’t the one answer God, and with God the difficult gift of the Christ? Even so I meet grey areas that lead me to believe that seeking is of value in itself when lived out in earnest. As for the answers, they will not be pinned down into small controllable sizes to be measured and distributed to a hungry populace, even as God is not to be so mishandled. In aching to be right, to be of the right religion, to get the right answer, our hearts and thus our actions evidence that our quest is not all right.

A quest, to be closer to right, needs to focus its energy on God, not on correctness, or a group, or divisions. We do not know God so well as to dictate to each other whom God loves best. Simone tells us in another letter to Father Perrin, since titled “Hesitations Concerning Baptism,” “It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.” (Fiedler; 50) Simone was earnestly considering her entrance into the church. Her concerns grew out of her obedience and humility to God alone. Her lesson speaks to a broader, less conscientious crowd, each becoming so self-conscious as to grade others against one’s own quest, and one’s own relationship to God. In such circumstances, truth is no longer the goal, nor God the hope, rather self-righteousness and claims to pride. Pride constructs divisions between God’s people. I do not believe that God respects our vanity. I trust that God does not honor the divisions we erect.

Furthering this idea, Dorothy Day offers these words, “I don’t think that God is so jealous of our worship of Him that He will want to separate those who serve His purpose, serve His goodness, because they have read a book, even one written by an atheist, and have been moved, or because they have wanted to be fair all their lives, but have never stepped in a church, from those who have heard God’s words in church or read His words in the Bible and have become convinced by them.” (Coles; 25) It is at once a beautiful and troubling thought. It is entirely sensible that God would be pleased with any who treat their neighbors well; with any who live in fairness and love. And it blatantly contradicts the convention of us “saved” or “elect” versus you “outcast” or “without God.” It is another case of challenging the notion of a small God. It is another grey area to be traveled in the quest for truth.

Simone Weil offers more to the discussion. From her “Spiritual Autobiography” we are told, “…Christianity is catholic by right but not in fact. So many things are outside it, so many things that I do not want to give up, so many things that God loves, otherwise they would not be in existence.” Here she speaks of our secular histories, various cultures and heresies, and she even praises the truths of other religions. I am increasingly attracted to this embracing of all life as presented by Simone Weil and Dorothy Day. All life is God’s and as such it offers more to one’s understanding of who God is. It provides more for the quest, for the relationship, even as it raises questions, doubts, and, yes, fears. When there is so much to be considered, so much more to not simply toss aside because it does not fit into the doctrines one was raised on, there is occasion for insecurity, and with insecurity there is often fear. It requires faith in a big enough God to celebrate the spectrum and its many shades, turning away from the dichotomy of “God’s” and “not God’s.” All are God’s, aren’t we?

Is it too optimistic to declare that we are all God’s? Dorothy Day tells us, “The longer I live, the more I see God at work in people who don’t have the slightest interest in religion and never read the Bible and wouldn’t know what to do if they were persuaded to go inside a church.” (Coles; 29) The guidance of both of these women, and the examples drawn from their own quests, suggests that to declare otherwise is blindness, at least shortsighted. I agree with them. We are all God’s and God utilizes each one with or without the deliberate offering of self to God. It is not, and ought not to have been or to become, a violence of division into secular and religious. That is an outlet of pride. It is an affront to God and to God’s creation.

Here I recall Day’s telling of a prison stay she endured and a prostitute called Mary Ann who taught her a valuable lesson. Day quotes Mary Ann as saying, “But you must see them [prison guards] for what they are – never forget that they are in prison too.” (Coles; 5) We are alike as more than blessed creations each available to do the work of God. We are all in jail too. The one who judges that nothing can be learned, nor blessing received from the people who are “without God” is trapped and without life just as that one has cursed others. We are alike in our need to quest, to hunger for truth, and to learn how to treat our neighbors. When Coles first met Dorothy Day she was intently listening to a woman who was drunk. After a time, Day excused herself to ask Coles, “Are you waiting to talk with one of us?” (Coles; xviii) The question presented the sameness of the two, Day and her acquaintance, as if it wasn’t obvious to whom he would want to speak, as if there were no difference between a motivated and able woman, and one who was intoxicated and unknown. Each of us is a jailed prisoner and a jailed jailer. Each of us is in the tension of confinement; longing to be freed, needing truth.

The response of Simone Weil and Dorothy Day is to live the example of Christ. Simon Weil, near the close of her “Spiritual Autobiography” boldly states, “…I think it is as well that a few sheep should remain outside the fold in order to bear witness that the love of Christ is essentially something different.” (Fiedler; 81) It is different than the discriminating religion of a small God and the narrow doctrine that defines that God. Simone Weil’s objective was obedience. She strived for obedience to the great God who was big enough to create the diversity of our world. She sought to live amidst that diversity as one of the many, not separating herself by her religion, but to know the people in sincerity and therefore to love them genuinely. In her view, our obligation, “is to show the public the possibility of a truly incarnated Christianity,” (Fiedler;75) It is a strong obligation born of God’s love and the example of Christ.

Dorothy Day was equally committed to the life of Christ, as was shown by her life as one of the people of the hospitality houses. When speaking of the work of the hospitality houses: meeting people’s immediate needs for food, shelter, and dignity, Day explains, “We are responding to a life, to Jesus and how He chose to live; we believe that choice says something, even now, to those who live so many centuries later.” (Coles; 101) To live in alignment with the work and teaching of Christ is not a simple contract of following rules and receiving compensation. The example of Christ involves the grieving of his heart for those who would not comprehend as he worked and lived among them, and as they turned on him to crucify him. It does not appear that to love one’s neighbor is an act of finesse or public affirmation. It is like the questing that is coupled to it, deliberate, persevered in, and endured for the realization of truth which glorifies God.

The final thought Day leaves us with is a quote from Cardinal Suhard, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda or even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery; it means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.” (Coles; 160) The great challenge of this quote is to have one’s life be absurd without God. The questing does not settle at love and service, and the recognition of all as God’s, but requires a life response to Christ. It is a response that bears witness to the existence of God by how one lives. The quest brings us to the presence of God not to rest but to continue to quest to know God more, to live God more, and to be daily learning how to treat one’s neighbors, God’s creations. In this grows the gratitude of quest that first impressed Day into my heart.